Machine Breakers

Machine Breakers takes place at the turn of the 20th century, but history has gone berserk and the era is not the prewar world as we know it. Instead it is a strange, dark, Orwellian world in which an almost 21st century technology is linked to a social organization that exemplifies the worst of the abuses of the 19th century's Industrial Revolution, and in which the teeming masses of Europe and America spend most of their lives slaving in mega-factories.

At the top of the social pyramid is a relative handful of wealthy technocrats who dominate the rest of the population and control society with an iron hand. At the bottom of the pyramid are countless millions of drones living empty, violent lives. But there is also a third force in this world, small in numbers but sizable in impact.

These are the descendants of the Luddites who, like the Luddites once themselves, are called "Machine Breakers." Through an underground network they are the only force in society standing between the few at the top and the many at the bottom, who consider them heroes.

But to the ruling elite, the Machine Breakers are arch criminals who threaten the very core of social order, and as such must be hunted and killed. The novel tell the story of the final Gotterdammerung, the end game between the two forces, one pledged to monolithic control, the other pledged to smashing the machinery of society to pieces.